People who bought this also bought...

Making Movies

By:
Sidney Lumet

Narrated by:
Richard M. Davidson

Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
54

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
47

Story

5 out of 5 stars
46

One of the greatest directors of all time, Sidney Lumet has made movies that have been nominated for more than 50 Academy Awards.
Making Movies is an honest and unflinching look at the business and craft of movie making. Lumet's book reveals the ingredients for the potion that brings movie magic to life and assures one thing: you will never look at movies the same way again.

5 out of 5 stars

One of the better "How To's" of Movie Making.

By
James M. Patton
on
02-12-18

The Big Picture

The Fight for the Future of Movies

By:
Ben Fritz

Narrated by:
Timothy Andrés Pabon

Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
86

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
75

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
74

In the past decade, Hollywood has endured a cataclysm on a par with the end of silent film and the demise of the studio system. Stars and directors have seen their power dwindle, while writers and producers lift their best techniques from TV, comic books, and the toy biz. The future of Hollywood is being written by powerful corporate brands like Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, and Lego, as well as censors in China. Ben Fritz chronicles this dramatic shakeup with unmatched skill, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood.

5 out of 5 stars

Best book I have heard in a while.

By
Carl
on
07-07-18

A History of France

By:
John Julius Norwich

Narrated by:
John Julius Norwich

Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
27

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
24

Story

4 out of 5 stars
24

John Julius Norwich - called a "true master of narrative history" by Simon Sebag Montefiore - returns with the book he has spent his distinguished career wanting to write, A History of France, a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best. Beginning with Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters - Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Marie Antionette, to name a few - as Norwich chronicles France's often violent, always fascinating history.

4 out of 5 stars

I could listen to this guy read the phone book.

By
Jeff
on
12-05-18

Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story

By:
Angus Fletcher,
The Great Courses

Narrated by:
Angus Fletcher

Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins

Original Recording

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
183

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
162

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
159

Whether you want to write your own scripts or simply gain a deeper appreciation for the great stories you see unfold on the screen, Professor Angus Fletcher is here to show you the way in
Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story. Professor Fletcher, Professor of English and Film at The Ohio State University, brings both a personal and scholarly perspective to this craft. As a screenwriter himself, he has experienced the ins and outs of the process first-hand.

5 out of 5 stars

it's great

By
Kindle Customer
on
02-11-18

Hollywood Hellraisers

The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson

By:
Robert Sellers

Narrated by:
Jim Frangione

Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
42

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
37

Story

4 out of 5 stars
37

In his follow-up to the acclaimed
Hellraisers, Sellers traces the intertwining lives and careers of four outrageous Hollywood movie mavericks. They’re the baddest bad-asses Hollywood as ever seen: Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson. They are men to whom rules did not apply; normal standards of behavior were simply too wearisome to worry about.

5 out of 5 stars

great read!

By
Raymond Chase
on
03-10-17

Tinseltown

Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

By:
William J. Mann

Narrated by:
Christopher Lane

Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
1,462

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,324

Story

4 out of 5 stars
1,331

By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.

5 out of 5 stars

Everybody's a dreamer...

By
Steven
on
01-08-15

Making Movies

By:
Sidney Lumet

Narrated by:
Richard M. Davidson

Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins

Unabridged

Overall

5 out of 5 stars
54

Performance

5 out of 5 stars
47

Story

5 out of 5 stars
46

One of the greatest directors of all time, Sidney Lumet has made movies that have been nominated for more than 50 Academy Awards.
Making Movies is an honest and unflinching look at the business and craft of movie making. Lumet's book reveals the ingredients for the potion that brings movie magic to life and assures one thing: you will never look at movies the same way again.

5 out of 5 stars

One of the better "How To's" of Movie Making.

By
James M. Patton
on
02-12-18

The Big Picture

The Fight for the Future of Movies

By:
Ben Fritz

Narrated by:
Timothy Andrés Pabon

Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
86

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
75

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
74

In the past decade, Hollywood has endured a cataclysm on a par with the end of silent film and the demise of the studio system. Stars and directors have seen their power dwindle, while writers and producers lift their best techniques from TV, comic books, and the toy biz. The future of Hollywood is being written by powerful corporate brands like Marvel, Amazon, Netflix, and Lego, as well as censors in China. Ben Fritz chronicles this dramatic shakeup with unmatched skill, bringing equal fluency to both the financial and entertainment aspects of Hollywood.

5 out of 5 stars

Best book I have heard in a while.

By
Carl
on
07-07-18

A History of France

By:
John Julius Norwich

Narrated by:
John Julius Norwich

Length: 15 hrs and 11 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
27

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
24

Story

4 out of 5 stars
24

John Julius Norwich - called a "true master of narrative history" by Simon Sebag Montefiore - returns with the book he has spent his distinguished career wanting to write, A History of France, a portrait of the past two centuries of the country he loves best. Beginning with Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul in the first century BC, this study of French history comprises a cast of legendary characters - Charlemagne, Louis XIV, Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and Marie Antionette, to name a few - as Norwich chronicles France's often violent, always fascinating history.

4 out of 5 stars

I could listen to this guy read the phone book.

By
Jeff
on
12-05-18

Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story

By:
Angus Fletcher,
The Great Courses

Narrated by:
Angus Fletcher

Length: 12 hrs and 44 mins

Original Recording

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
183

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
162

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
159

Whether you want to write your own scripts or simply gain a deeper appreciation for the great stories you see unfold on the screen, Professor Angus Fletcher is here to show you the way in
Screenwriting 101: Mastering the Art of Story. Professor Fletcher, Professor of English and Film at The Ohio State University, brings both a personal and scholarly perspective to this craft. As a screenwriter himself, he has experienced the ins and outs of the process first-hand.

5 out of 5 stars

it's great

By
Kindle Customer
on
02-11-18

Hollywood Hellraisers

The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson

By:
Robert Sellers

Narrated by:
Jim Frangione

Length: 14 hrs and 5 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
42

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
37

Story

4 out of 5 stars
37

In his follow-up to the acclaimed
Hellraisers, Sellers traces the intertwining lives and careers of four outrageous Hollywood movie mavericks. They’re the baddest bad-asses Hollywood as ever seen: Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty, and Jack Nicholson. They are men to whom rules did not apply; normal standards of behavior were simply too wearisome to worry about.

5 out of 5 stars

great read!

By
Raymond Chase
on
03-10-17

Tinseltown

Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

By:
William J. Mann

Narrated by:
Christopher Lane

Length: 15 hrs and 55 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
1,462

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,324

Story

4 out of 5 stars
1,331

By 1920, the movies had suddenly become America's new favorite pastime and one of the nation's largest industries. Never before had a medium possessed such power to influence; yet Hollywood's glittering ascendancy was threatened by a string of headline-grabbing tragedies - including the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the popular president of the Motion Picture Directors Association, a legendary crime that has remained unsolved until now.

5 out of 5 stars

Everybody's a dreamer...

By
Steven
on
01-08-15

The Speed of Sound

Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926 - 1930

By:
Scott Eyman

Narrated by:
Adams Morgan

Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
48

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
29

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
29

In this mixture of cultural and social history that is both scholarly and vastly entertaining, Eyman dispels the myths and gives us the missing chapter in the history of Hollywood, the ribbon of dreams by which America conquered the world.

5 out of 5 stars

Great History of Talkies

By
Laura A. Cella
on
02-25-16

A Short History of Film

By:
Wheeler Winston Dixon,
Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

Narrated by:
Walter Dixon

Length: 15 hrs and 16 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
59

Performance

4 out of 5 stars
47

Story

4 out of 5 stars
47

The history of international cinema is now available in a concise, conveniently sized, and affordable volume. Succinct yet comprehensive,
A Short History of Film provides an accessible overview of the major movements, directors, studios, and genres from the 1880s to the present.

5 out of 5 stars

A fascinating textbook - (is that possible?)

By
Alan
on
11-02-12

A History of Horror

By:
Wheeler Winston Dixon

Narrated by:
Aaron Henkin

Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins

Unabridged

Overall

3.5 out of 5 stars
29

Performance

3.5 out of 5 stars
27

Story

3 out of 5 stars
26

Ever since horror leapt from popular fiction to the silver screen in the late 1890s, viewers have experienced fear and pleasure in exquisite combination. Wheeler Winston Dixon's
A History of Horror is the only book to offer a comprehensive survey of this ever-popular film genre. Arranged by decades, with outliers and franchise films overlapping some years, this one-stop sourcebook unearths the historical origins of characters such as Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman and their various incarnations in film from the silent era to comedic sequels.

3 out of 5 stars

good not great

By
eric
on
05-24-16

Imperial Twilight

The Opium War and the End of China's Last Golden Age

By:
Stephen R. Platt

Narrated by:
Mark Deakins

Length: 17 hrs and 50 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
77

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
70

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
70

When Britain launched its first war on China in 1839, pushed into hostilities by profiteering drug merchants and free-trade interests, it sealed the fate of what had long been seen as the most prosperous and powerful empire in Asia, if not the world. But internal problems of corruption, popular unrest, and dwindling finances had weakened China far more than was commonly understood, and the war would help set in motion the eventual fall of the Qing dynasty - which, in turn, would lead to the rise of nationalism and communism in the 20th century.

4 out of 5 stars

Balanced readable narrative about the Opium Wars

By
Carl A. Gallozzi
on
09-05-18

Gilgamesh

A New English Version

By:
Stephen Mitchell - translator

Narrated by:
George Guidall

Length: 4 hrs and 5 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4 out of 5 stars
2,588

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
2,076

Story

4 out of 5 stars
2,071

This brilliant new treatment of the world's oldest epic is a literary event on par with Seamus Heaney's wildly popular
Beowulf translation. Esteemed translator and best-selling author Stephen Mitchell energizes a heroic tale so old it predates Homer's
Iliad by more than a millennium.

4 out of 5 stars

A defense of this "translation"

By
George
on
07-16-08

How Democracies Die

By:
Steven Levitsky,
Daniel Ziblatt

Narrated by:
Fred Sanders

Length: 8 hrs and 24 mins

Unabridged

Overall

4.5 out of 5 stars
1,017

Performance

4.5 out of 5 stars
911

Story

4.5 out of 5 stars
907

Donald Trump's presidency has raised a question that many of us never thought we'd be asking: Is our democracy in danger? Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have spent more than twenty years studying the breakdown of democracies in Europe and Latin America, and they believe the answer is yes. Democracy no longer ends with a bang--in a revolution or military coup--but with a whimper: the slow, steady weakening of critical institutions, such as the judiciary and the press, and the gradual erosion of long-standing political norms.

5 out of 5 stars

Connecting the Dots

By
Sharon F
on
02-06-18

Publisher's Summary

The pantheon of big-budget, commercially successful films encompasses a range of genres, including biblical films, war films, romances, comic-book adaptations, animated features, and historical epics. In Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters: A Hollywood History authors Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale discuss the characteristics, history, and modes of distribution and exhibition that unite big-budget pictures, from their beginnings in the late nineteenth century to the present. Moving chronologically, the authors examine the roots of today's blockbuster in the "feature," "special," "superspecial," "roadshow," "epic," and "spectacle" of earlier eras, with special attention to the characteristics of each type of picture.

In the first section, Hall and Neale consider the beginnings of features, specials, and superspecials in American cinema, as the terms came to define not the length of a film but its marketable stars or larger budget. The second section investigates roadshowing as a means of distributing specials and the changes to the roadshow that resulted from the introduction of synchronized sound in the 1920s.

In the third section, the authors examine the phenomenon of epics and spectacles that arose from films like Gone with the Wind, Samson and Deliliah, and Spartacus and continues to evolve today in films like Spider-Man and Pearl Harbor. Hall and Neale consider advances in visual and sound technology and the effects and costs they introduced to the industry.

Scholars of film and television studies as well as readers interested in the history of American moviemaking will enjoy Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters.

Critic Reviews

“Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale's new book
Epics, Spectacles, and Blockbusters provides a clear, chronological account of industry trends, starting with imported ‘passion plays' in the 1900s, and culminating with the release of
Avatar at the end of 2009. The result is an invaluable tool for future scholarship on popular cinema.” (Jim Whalley,
New Review of Film and Television Studies)

“From
Birth of a Nation to
Titanic, from
Intolerance to
Heaven's Gate, Hollywood's greatest triumphs and disasters have been big-budget spectaculars marketed on their monumental scale. Pioneering a new kind of cinema history, Sheldon Hall and Steve Neale tell the epic story of how these commercial behemoths have been packaged and sold to the public, showing us that the movies' cultural significance is as much a product of how they are distributed and consumed as it is of their production.” (Richard Maltby, professor of screen studies at Flinders University and author of
Hollywood Cinema)

“This is the book many of us have been waiting for: a comprehensive and systematic new account of American film history which puts its costliest productions and biggest hits first. Accessibly written and extremely well researched, this study forces us to revise our understanding of Hollywood's past and present.” (Peter Krmer, senior lecturer in film studies, University of East Anglia)

Story

Detail, Names, and Statistics

I took a course in film history back in college, and while I won't go into detail, suffice it to say it was a joke. This is the book that outlines what I wish they had taught. I want to go back in time with a physical copy of it and beat my professors over the head with it.

What's inside here is an almost complete look at the evolution of the Hollywood blockbuster machine, just as the title of the book implies. Fair warning to the uninitiated: if you're not already familiar with the lingo, you'll get no real definitions here. For all things there is Google. This book will expect you to know the difference between roadshows, grindhouse, reserve ticket, and things of that nature. Easy enough to wrap your head around. It will also outline the differences in process as the evolution goes, so you'll learn about Cinemascope, Vistascope, Panavision, Dolby, and other such things, and how it all fits together. The spotlight is on the process, the commercial trends, and the development of how things became what they are today. It's not exactly in chronological order, but it is told generally that way with an eye towards sweeping trends first, so there is some overlap here and there in the timeline.

The narrator gives a solid delivery, though I had to grin whenever he does a direct quote from any source. All quoted passages are delivered in what I call "golfer announcer voice." He drops his tone to a kind of a whisper and removes all expression from it. On the plus column, he's more upbeat when the text doesn't directly quote.

All in all, this one's for the film buffs and armchair historians who like to peek behind the scenes. It could be better, it could be more in-depth on certain stories, but it will definitely offer a breadth of material with deliberate focus and will point you towards more research if you so desire.